How to Create a Free Website with IM Creator

IM Creator is an online service that makes creating and publishing websites very simple. Of course, there are a variety of different plans that you can choose to best match your specific needs. The way you create a website is very simple as this service is meant for people who cannot or do not want to code and instead need something easy and quick.

In this tutorial I will be going over how to create a simple webpage by choosing and manipulating a template to make it your own. I cannot stress enough how simple it is to do this; I promise!

Getting started

In this guide we will be creating a sample website for a photographer named Zoe Kennedy.

Step one would be to go to IMcreator.com and click on the big blue button that says, “Start Now”. You’ll get a pop up which will let you decide between choosing a template (which is what we are going to do), start from blank, or go to your site. Go ahead and click “Choose a template”.

This is the interface where you can browse all the different templates IM Creator has to offer – there are just so many and all of them are amazing. Click the ‘photographer’ tab on the right, then find a template called ‘single_jim_tri’; that is the one we will be playing around with.

Once you’ve selected the ‘singl_jim_tri’ template, you will be directed to a page that will have a preview of the template. To continue click the blue button in the top right corner that says “Customize Now”.

Editing the template

See, wasn’t getting to here easy? It’s not going to get anymore complicated either. As you can see there are a bunch of thing going on in this new interface. Take a look around, as most of these things are straightforward. I will go over the more important stuff now.

First things first, let’s go ahead and change the text. To do that just click on a paragraph and you’ll see a tooltip appear. To edit the actual text click the “edit text” selection that appeared right by your cursor and voilà! You can now manipulate the text like you’d in any other text editor.

Next, let’s replace the big image that’s on the right side of this home page. To do that, click on it and then select “Replace Pic” from the dropdown. Select any one you have handy on your computer and you’re good to go.

By default the image will be set to fill the preexisting area. To change this you will have to use the option at the top bar. Go ahead and play with some of them right now; I’ll wait.

One of the buttons atop called “Set info” allows you to fill out necessary accessibility information per each image such as a title and description and creates a link for the image if you need to do that too.

Editing different pages

For now let’s leave the home page and try to edit another one instead. In order to edit the about page just to click the about link in the navigation within the home page, as if the page was actually live. And there you have it, now you’re on the about page.

Right away, let’s change out the name and maybe edit it a bit by changing the font face and size.

Now wasn’t that just easy? Next, let’s swap out the small image that is right below the text we just changed. Just like before, click on the image and then click on “Replace Pic.”

Once you’ve selected the image you want to input let’s change its size. To do this, just drag over one of the dots that are on the outside border of the image. To move the image, click on the border itself. To finish off this amazing about page, why don’t we replace the image on the right with something much better too?

Settings and background

At the top of the interface, you’ll find a tab called ‘Settings’. Click it. Here you have a bunch of awesome stuff that doesn’t concern us for now, as it is a bit too advanced. The thing we are interested in is background.

Click on the background button and you’ll see a box appear that will allow you to change the background to either an image of sorts or a solid colour. To keep thing simple I’ve chosen a solid orange colour.

Add an element

Also at the top is an “Add an element’ tab. If you select it, you’ll see a bunch of awesome things you could add to the page.

To see how it works exactly, select “Line” of the list and it will appear on the page, ready for you to edit it. Resize its width to be just enough to be the width of the smaller image on the right and place it between that image and the text below it. Extremely easy to do; no code required!

Pages

The third tab we need to go over is ‘Pages’. This is where you’ll mange all the different pages you currently have, where you can add or even duplicate a page.

Before when we wanted to get to the about page, we clicked it, but we can also select it from within the pages tab which is much more helpful if you have a page that is not currently being linked to.

On top of that, this section is where you could create new pages. So, go ahead and create a simple blank page. To fill it up with content, you’d refer to the “Add an element” section.

Saving and publishing

I must say that this has been a thorough walkthrough; there is nothing else we really need to take a look at besides how to save your awesome page. I’m sure you’ve seen the big blue button in the top right corner, which says “Publish” while we’ve been manipulating this template. Well, click on it.

You’ll be prompted to give this site a name – don’t use spaces – to save all your files. Once you do that, if you are not logged in you’ll be asked to create an account with IM Creator so that the website can actually be saved. If you don’t have a hosting plan purchased at IM Creator, then your website will be published at their own domain with the name you’ve given to this project.

Once that is done, go ahead and click the ‘Preview’ tap to check out a preview of your site.

Connecting to your domain

If you have a free account with IM Creator, you are done. Yay! However, if you do have a paid plan, you should use the Domain Connector in order to connect your newly done website to your own domain. And now, you are totally ready to go!